The Bishop

Part of the Fundamentals section of Coddy's Chess journey. Lesson 7 of 41.

The bishop is the rook's mirror image: it also slides any distance in a straight line, but its lines are the diagonals.

Bishop on d4 with arrows along both diagonals

The bishop on d4 slides along two diagonals: 13 squares in reach.

Now look closer at those diagonals, because they hide the bishop's defining quirk. Every diagonal step lands on a square of the same color. The bishop on d4 stands on a dark square, and all 13 squares it can reach are dark too. A bishop keeps its starting color for the entire game.

Bishop on f1 with its seven light squares in green and dark e1 in red

This bishop lives on light squares: the seven green squares are its whole world right now. Dark e1, one step away, is a square it will never touch.

That is why each side gets two bishops. White's bishop from c1 patrols the dark squares, the one from f1 patrols the light squares. Together they cover the whole board; lose one, and half the squares are safe from your bishops for the rest of the game.

White's two bishops on their starting squares c1 and f1